Author: psgels

Heartcatch Precure – 49

by psgels, posted in Heartcatch Precure




Ah, of course: this episode still had the final moment of our bad guy left: the point at which he increases in size and… holy crap is he huge!

In terms of physics it obviously made no sense whatsoever, but it really looked cool here. The finale mostly stands out in its eye candy, in terms of what actually happens, it pretty much ends like you think it would, including a bit of a deus ex machina that allows the four precures to grow huge enough themselves in order to be able to beat it. Not really a great ending, but it still was a very good one, simply due to the execution and the aftermath that followed afterwards, wrapping up the rest of the story quite nicely, plus we actually got to see Tsubomi’s new sister. I would have liked to see how Cobraja and Sarosina ended up as, but this episode gave enough hints that the two of them also ended up fine.

Now, Suite Precure. This episode indeed ended with a preview. One thing is for sure at this point: it is not going to be the visual orgasm that Heartcatch Precure was. To start, you should know the following:
– Heartcatch Precure’s characters were designed by the guy who also did the character designs of Casshern Sins.
– Suite Precure’s characters were designed by the guy who also did the character designs of Kaidan Restaurant. And this guy is also going to be the chief animation director!

Get what I mean? The result is…. ugh. The animation also doesn’t look as polished as Heartcatch Precure either, nor does the editing look any good.

The only thing we can hope for now is that the mysterious series composition guy actually knows what he’s doing, and that the director is up to the job. He did direct the One Piece Strong World Movie, but I have no clue whether he’d also work for a long series as Suite Precure. He was the episode director of three Heartcatch Precure episodes before, which were all pretty good and especially in the way that they focused on the characters. I really hope that he’s going to take that over to Suite Precure, because there still is some potential.

In any case, to get back to Heartcatch, it has definitely been fun following this series for the past year. It ahd a lot of mahou shoujo tropes, but had such a solid execution that those didn’t matter at all.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Star Driver – 17

by psgels, posted in Star Driver



A beach episode? Of course, things wouldn’t be so simple. This episode was about 40% beach, and the other 60 percent answered a ton of questions, along with changing the entire set-up of this show, yet again.

Interestingly, this episode revealed that all of the seals had to be broken in a particular order. Interestingly, that makes a lot of the battles early on in the series much more like long-term preparations by the crux brigade: they were basically killing time while they were trying to find out where the heck the fourth maiden went. Wako getting captured in the first episode was nothing more than one of the members of the brigade acting for herself.

The badges meanwhile turned out to be fake emblems. Head probably used those at first, while he was trying to gather the ones with the real emblems. What does this mean for the ones who always used the fake emblems? I mean, in terms of combat ability they have become completely pointless now, despite how the entire series has been carefully building up their characters, and here they suddenly get swapped out by this horde of characters where far less attention went into.

One big mystery at this point is Sugata: I really feel like the creators are saving a ton of stuff for the last third of this series, and this king cybody has to be one of the major ones: this episode revealed that he also is completely useless now that the third phase is is activated. Plus, there still is the mystery of what makes Takuto so special: in the previous episodes he always miraculously was one phase above the others, but the new power he finds here is kindof vague. It’s in any case not the fourth phase, because then he’d permanently be a Galactic Pretty-Boy.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Mitsudomoe Zouryouchuu! – 04

by psgels, posted in Mitsudomoe



And this episode is hilarious again. Seriously, this show is inconsistent, but that’s also part of the fun: this way you won’t know what to expect, which is definitely good for a comedy. This episode was mostly made out of random sketched, but the good thing about this episode was that all of them were pretty much different from each other. Again: unpredictability is great for a comedy.

And among these sketches were a number of great ones. My favourite was the one where Miku photoshopped a bunch of pictures of Mitsuba. There’s just so much wrong about that: the fact that Miku had been stalking and secretly taking pictures, to the way that she actually tried to make them into a ghost story. The best part was when it turned out that she ended up photoshopping Hitoha’s face on all these pictures. It was quite well built up and completely hilarious. I also like that the occult girl turned into a nice running gag here,similar to the ones that Gintama used.

The last sketch of the episode, the swimming pool one, was also a great one, especially when the creators kept toying with Hitoha’s death, accompanied by conveniently appearing violinists, only to be followed by a huge anti-climax when Futaba appeared. The ED that followed there was also priceless. It perhaps wasn’t as good as the custom ED of that one episode of the first season, but it’s still great to see the creators pulling this again, while not overdoing it with every single episode.

There also were a number of sketches that had their minds into the gutter, but I actually found them pretty funny this time. Especially the first one, which was wrong on many levels, but the fact that the same thing pretty much went on into the mind of all four of the girls made it hilarious.

And yet again: this episode avoided what was milked out the most in the first season: the misunderstandings. It did continue with Yuudai’s perverted techniques, but even there it built further upon it, instead of just repeating the same jokes. The worst part of this episode was for me the festival one: that was just the umpth time in which the creators tried to put some panties on Shinya, which has gotten really old by now.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Letter Bee – 42

by psgels, posted in Letter Bee



So apparently we’re now in anime original territory? Well, this episode didn’t feel as solid in the adventure department, but that may also be because if I got things right, the episode director of this episode was the director of Glass no Kantai… In any case, I’m glad that the creators are now already building up to their own ending, rather than doing this, say, during the final three episodes.

What I meant with that this episode wasn’t as solid as the others was that strange point of Aria fanservice that felt totally out of place for this series, or the way in which Nichi suddenly pulled another power out of nowhere(she can now even make wheelchairs), that conveniently located trap door for Nichi or that very badly animated horse carriage…

At the same time though, there was still plenty of good stuff here, most of it revolving around Gauche versus Lag. The scene in which Gauche pretty much tells him that he simply received a bunch of Lag’s memories is quite powerful, but at the same time we got confirmed that the letter bullet at least partially worked: if Gauche entirely spoke the truth in that scene, he would have been able to kill Lag easily.
Rating: * (Good)

Bakuman – 17

by psgels, posted in Bakuman



This was another one of the very good episodes of Bakuman. The premise was simple: just stuff a bunch of mangaka into a room watch them for 20 minutes. It worked wonderfully and I loved how good they play off each other. Nizuma and Moritaka already were very different, but the creators add two more vastly different characters here, with varying amounts of experience.

This episode also touched upon the less than dreamy side of manga writing: if you can’t come up with interesting storylines or images you can very easily spend decades as an assistant. Granted, this is an anime so I guess that we are to assume that that 33-year-old guy is really old, but this episode did seem to suggest that most manga authors are fairly young. Is that a fair assumption, or are there also plenty of older mangaka around, beyond the successful ones?

I also like how this episode established that Niizuma wasn’t perfect either, and that he actually learns some things from the other characters. The dialogue in this episode felt quite natural, especially when Eiji went out of “airplane-mode” and started talking normally. This probably is the first shounen jump adaptation in ages that doesn’t have some sort of bad guy, and it really showed in this episode: nobody is really trying to be evil here, and instead they’re just being themselves.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

The Big O Review – 87,5/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews




I currently have reviewed almost 700 series (this is my 692th review, to be exact), and yet I haven’t quite seen anything like The Big O here. The way in which it somehow manages to combine film noir with giant robots fighting each other is really commendable. On top of that, the soundtrack is completely unique as well, it has a unique main character for an anime, and even the entire premise that this series is based on is just… unlike anything I’ve seen. Sunrise, I applaud you for creating such an interesting series!

First things first, though, because this series does like to toy with your suspense of disbelief a lot. You see, the protagonist, Roger Smith has the profession of “Negotiator”: he mediates between fair deals in order to solve conflicts. And seriously, you’d be surprised at how this show time and time again makes these negotiation jobs boil down to giant robot fights. Some villains have some of the most bizarre reasons to suddenly grab a giant robot in order to attempt to accomplish their goals.

I also hope that you like series that don’t bother to answer all of the questions they ask, because this show loves to pretend that it doesn’t make any sense. Instead, it leaves things up to the viewer to interpret, and fill in the blanks. And that’s the beauty of this series: none of the characters really has any idea what’s going on. What we see here is 26 episodes of characters struggling against the unknown, everyone doing this with a different interpretation. This show doesn’t just have an original setting, it also manages to make it very deep by consistently looking at it through different eyes and trying to analyze it.

It also helps that it’s wonderfully told. The entire series has this great mysterious atmosphere, and the stories it presents work really well with the lead couple, Roger Smith and Dorothy. The two of them also play off each other extremely well and are both very well written. Roger Smith is a great lead character because he constantly thinks and never takes anything for granted, while Dorothy’s deadpan portrayal of an android is consistently haunting. The dialogue is also really well written, and the scriptwriters time and time again manage to accurately portray all of the different characters end up in this series.

The Big O is mostly episodic, but it’s the kind where everything comes together at the end. When I watched some of the episodes, they seemed pretty pointless at first, but now that I just finished the final episodes, I’m surprised at how each of the episodes had its purpose, either by adding to one of the characters, giving the setting more depth, or the storyline itself.

My one complaint is that the action scenes, while wonderfully combined with the dialogue, do feel a bit formulaic after a while. This also has to do with the fact that the battles are often held held for… strange reasons. As the show goes on, the stakes that are put on the battles actually increase, though, which takes the monotony away again.

This show also has its share of mindscrew moments. If you’re looking for a confusing series to watch, then this definitely is a recommendation, because when you look beyond the unanswered questions you can see that this show has a story that the creators put a lot of thought and effort into.

Storytelling: 9/10 – Excellent atmosphere and good build-up. The script is great and everything nicely comes together after a while. Just don’t start nit-picking every tiny detail.
Characters: 9/10 – Diverse, no teenagers, and the characters fit the setting exactly and make excellent use of this.
Production-Values: 8/10 – Unique look, and during the money shots the inbetween animation really is impressive.
Setting: 9/10 – Imaginative, unique and thought-provoking. It doesn’t answer a majority of the questions it asks, but knows it and uses it to its full advantage.

Suggestions:
– Argento Soma
– Bokura no
– Gasaraki

Wolverine – 04

by psgels, posted in Wolverine



Well, the Marvel Anime are definitely consistent: Iron Man was consistently bad, while Wolverine is consistent simple but effective action that doesn’t pretend to be anything more than what it is. I’m still enjoying this show, so I’m happy with how things turned out for this series.

This episode also showed that Wolverine is better at flashbacks. In Iron Man, they were ridiculously cheesy, so this show instead just came with a much more typical Superhero backstory: Wolverine beat this guy once and basically ruined his entire life with that, and now he’s out for revenge. Again, it’s simple, but it does make for a decent villain. Omega Red’s biggest flaw at this point is that killing Wolverine is pretty much the only thing on his mind, but granted: he is pretty effective at it.

I like how Wolverine really is forced to use his surroundings in order to get rid of this guy. It makes the action scenes a bit more interesting, and also allows for plenty of explosions. When watching this series, I really wonder how the X-Men anime will be: Wolverine standalone is simple, and that fits this show exactly. In the X-Men however, he’s just a part of something far bigger with a much bigger focus on a plot. Ah well, it’s all going to depend on the kinds of writers and directors that Madhouse is going to put on it.

NB: One major downside to this episode: Yukio was pretty useless this time. Granted, this villain was something she couldn’t really do anything against, but make sure that the next villains will also allow her to be involved in the fights as well.
Rating: * (Good)

Gosick – 04

by psgels, posted in Gosick



Aaahh, I give in. Despite how incredibly flawed the mystery in this series is, I’m going to blog it and drop Dragon Crisis, but if Suite Precure next week is crap, I’m going to pick it back up. I know that I’m really juggling around series this season, but blame their strange airing patterns!

The reason why I originally chose Dragon Crisis over Gosick had a lot to do with my assumption that Gosick would only be 12 episodes long (I mean, how much work can you put on Mari Okada anyway). The characters were just too annoying, and because of that I wanted to give Dragon Crisis more a chance to impress me in a second half, despite being much more cliched (hey, there have been plenty of series that start out really cliched, but get more creative and interesting as they go on). But guess what? Gosick is going to be is going to be 24 episodes long. This actually allows the characters to develop and the shows to evolve. Besides, the stories are small and compact, so there should be plenty to talk about.

Don’t get me wrong though, this episode still was pretty flawed. I’m really not sure why Bones put the director of Heroman of all things on this thing, and it shows: this is miles away from their best work. The one advantage that this series has over Heroman however, is that this time, the source material is actually pretty interesting. If you don’t look at the execution, but just at the story, I admit that this show is pretty interesting.

In this episode, the creator pretty much presented two stories for Victorique, and especially the first one was pretty bad: Kazuya states exactly all of the clues that are needed to solve the mystery including a daydream that just… makes no sense, both in the way that he told it and the fact that Victorique connects this daydream to the culprit. That’s exactly what I mean by that Victorique isn’t a genius at all, and how she simply has access to the script of this series. In comparison, a real genius detective would be Sakon, from Ayatsuri Sakon: that also is a series in which people have been murdered by ingenious plots (but not too ingenious to the point where it gets ridiculous), and Sakon mostly spends his time carefully gathering clues and examining his surroundings, before relating all of those together. In Ayatsuri Sakon, we really get to see Sakon’s thought process. In Gosick, we get none of that.

Instead, we just get some interesting stories. It makes no sense, but I do like how most of the mysteries in this series aren’t standalone and how they eventually become connected with each other. This show outright sucks at the “how” of its mysteries, but one thing I like is that the creators wait really long to explain exactly why things happened. This allows you to fill in some of the details for yourself. At the very least, I can see that the original source material of this series had some very interesting ideas. But was Victorique also a Mary-sue like she is in the anime version, or was this completely different?
Rating: (Enjoyable)

Yumekui Merry – 04

by psgels, posted in Yumekui Merry



Interestingly, this episode showed that this show can be quite good at slice of life. A lot of this episode featured just random stuff as going to a karaoke bar, or characters randomly talking to each other. What makes these random scenes so good in this show is that they always manage to relate it back to the characters and themes, so that none of it is really pointless. It’s also good to have these kinds of scenes, as the characters of Merry were in dire need of some more variation in their personalities, and this episode gave it to them.

Another thing that I just realized that this show is very good at is keeping its random stories short but sweet. I mean, this show spends a lot of time on its main characters, considering how they also need to flesh out a random character each episode, and yet they consistently do this right so far. At the start it seems simple, and not very interesting, but during the action scenes at the last quarter of the episodes things come together quite nicely. The story in this episode had a villain who was very nicely in the gray scale between good and evil: he was simply a lost dream who didn’t know what was going on either, and for the heck of it decided to take control of the girl he came into contract with.

It’s also clever of the creators in the Karaoke scene, where Merry noted that an awful amount of songs were about hope and dreams. Now that they mention it, that is surprisingly true. ^^;

Finally, I like how the terms of this series are really vague: first we had dreams in this series that could both be the strange things that happen to you while you sleep and your hopes and goals for the future. Now this episode comes and gives multiple meanings to sending someone back. Merry just uses it an expression when she gets rid of another Numa that invaded the real world, but the Numa in this episode seemed to believe that she could actually send people back to the world in which they came from.

Still… what was up with that maid outfit?
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica – 04

by psgels, posted in Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica



My impression of this season, now that we’re four weeks in: it’s small, full of teenagers and there are quite a few series that I really don’t want to waste my time on. But holy crap! I’m really amazed at how many really good series have appeared. Madoka Magica’s fourth episode was again a really good one. At this point, Madoka Magica is already my favourite Shaft series since ef – a Tale of Memories.

Where Heartcatch Precure was exactly what the shoujo-targeted mahou shoujo needed, Madoka Magica was exactly what the seinen-targeted mahou shoujo genre needed. This is looking out to be an excellent deconstruction at this pace. To just take an example here: just about every mahou shoujo accepts her fate in the first or second episode. After a few minutes of doubt, she’s willing to change her entire life in order to fight crime because she happens to be some chosen one. In Madoka Magica, Madoka still hasn’t become a mahou shoujo after four episodes. The past four episodes have shown that the downsides to becoming one have some real significance.

This episode also showed that just about everyone has her own agenda, which especially became clear when Sayaka suddenly decided on a whim to become a mahou shoujo, for the sake of her boyfriend at the point where Madoka herself had decided not to become one. This also shows what a bastard Kyubei can be: he says goodbye, but instantly appears whenever he feels that someone is ready to make a contract.

Regarding a bit of a small detail: I wonder what Homura meant when she said that it would take a long time for people to file her as missing? I mean, wouldn’t the people at her school find it strange that she’s gone? I mean, I of course do not know how schools in Japan are supposed to act when students start skipping classes, but in the Netherlands it’s a pretty serious offense for kids of Madoka’s age to be absent unannounced for more than a couple of days.

Which brings me to the next question that may be thinking a bit too much into the setting here, but how many people know about the existence of these mahou shoujo? Do the police know about them, for example? I mean, what happens when one of these seeds explodes without either a mahou shoujo nearby, or one that pretty much kills everyone around it? That’s bound to raise some suspicion sooner or later, isn’t it?
Rating: *** (Awesome)